The following is a former winner of the Amazing but Incredibly True Story Contest.
Copyright Greta Sproul, 1998
Ever since adolescence, I've been prone to spontaneous out-of-body experiences. Spontaneity is the key word, though. No matter how hard I try, I've not been able to produce an oobe through my own free will. In a way, this is probably just as well because my husband is not at all interested in psychic matters. He calls them "mysteries" and thinks they're best left alone, and so we try to respect each other's point of view.
However, there was one incident about four years ago that forced our paths to intersect--for a moment anyway. I was sleeping in a downstairs bedroom with our then one-year-old son. My husband was upstairs in the master bedroom. Sometime in the night, I woke up to find myself rising out of bed, except I was rising without my usual physical accoutrements. I was having an oobe. I was absolutely conscious (as I often am), and I remember feeling the initial sensation of freedom and excitement as I proceeded through the bedroom doorway.
As I reached the kitchen, I heard footsteps on the stairs and realized that my husband was coming toward the room. Oddly, I panicked! I thought: Oh my God, this is terrible! I'm out of my body! What am I going to do? And then I remembered the obvious: I was out of my body so he wouldn't be able to see me.
I do recall very vividly his walking into the kitchen and pouring a glass of water at the sink. I recall walking (or floating or whatever it is I do in that state) up behind him and touching his shoulder and feeling my hand go through. Then there was nothing, no memory, until I woke up next day.
But next day was the best part! At dinner that evening, after conversing for a while about mostly mundane things, my husband paused and looked at me a little uncomfortably. I asked him what the matter was.
"I had a weird thing happen to me last night," he said. I wanted so much to say something, but I knew I'd scare him off. It was his story. So I played it cool.
"Oh, yeah?" I asked.
"It wasn't really anything. I don't know why I'm even mentioning it. Maybe just to entertain you since you love all this mumb-jumbo stuff."
"Well, tell me then."
"I was getting a drink of water," he said, "and I thought I saw you out of the corner of my eye. Right next to me. But you weren't there, obviously, and when I looked in Travis's room, you were asleep next to him. Weird, huh?"
"Yes," I said, "it is."
I know that when we're out of body we don't neccessarily retain our physical forms, but I wonder if my husband saw me with a psychic eye that night? Or perhaps he felt my presence and imagined me standing there. Whatever the mechanics of it, I cherish that moment as my one and only personally verified oobe experience. And from such an unlikely source! Later, I explained the whole thing to him and he STILL doesn't believe it. Oh, well, I suppose that someone's got to be a cynic and keep it interesting for the rest of us!
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